There are a number of marvelous books that address the topic of the case method. If you are interested in facilitating cases, you can look to the classic book Teaching and the Case Method by Louis Barnes, C. Roland Christensen and Abby Hansen (1994). The collection of essays on the subject, Education for Judgment: The Artistry of Discussion Leadership by C. Roland Christensen, David Garvin and Ann Sweet (1991) is a wonderful and inspiring read as well. If your interest is case-based research, it would be nearly impossible to find a more authoritative source than Robert Yin’s (2009, 4th Edition) Case Study Research: Design and Methods, which (at last count) has been cited nearly 29,000 times, according to Google Scholar. There is even a new entry to the field, William Ellet’s (2007) The Case Study Handbook: How to Read, Discuss, and Write Persuasively about Cases that is specifically aimed at the student. At first glance, then, the topic of case studies in education and research seems to be pretty well covered. Do we really need another book on the subject? I write this book believing the answer is yes. While I have great affection for the classics, there are a number of issues facing most business faculty—not to mention faculty members from disciplines outside of business—that these books simply do not address. In writing this book, my intention is to offer some thoughts on some of these. Paradoxically, these omissions arise from the very fact that the authors of the classics are undisputed masters of their craft. Why this is a problem should become clear as I identify the three areas of focus for this book. The first issue that I feel must be considered is using the case method with a novice audience. Consider the following. When I was enrolled in the MBA program at Harvard Business School (HBS) in the early 1980s, the curriculum consisted of nearly 900 case discussion (15 per week) and—perhaps—as many as 20 class periods given over to lecture-style presentations. When I teach a case-method graduate course at my own institution, on the other hand, I am constrained to 11 case discussions (a 12 week semester). As it happens, I am also the only course in the entire program that employs pedagogy reasonably faithful to the case method, as it is normally defined. The math is very simple. By the last day of my semester, my students have as much experience discussing cases as I did on Thursday afternoon of the first week of my two year MBA program at HBS. With the exception of faculty teaching at those rare institutions that have chosen to widely adopt the case method, the situation I face is commonplace. The second concern that existing books raise for me is their tendency to focus on isolated topics. Specifically, case facilitation, case writing and case research are treated as separable activities. I would argue that these three aspects of the case method—which I define quite broadly—are inseparable. For institutions that wish to achieve the full set of benefits provided by the case method, all three activities must be pursued in parallel. Perhaps this is why so few institutions have achieved success through the case method. In this book, I will argue that achieving such integration is precisely why those rare institutions have been so successful. Once you start believing that the case method can be a key to institutional success, how you get there becomes a real challenge. At leading institutions featuring the case method, such as HBS, the philosophy is largely learned through a period of apprenticeship. For example, I did not encounter any of the references mentioned in the first paragraph—excepting Yin—at any time during my 5 year doctorate at HBS. Instead, I went out and wrote cases, facilitated discussions and did research under the guidance of faculty members who were masters of the craft. How can someone without the benefit of such an experience acquire such mastery? While I cannot offer any promises in this regard, I will at least provide some examples and easy-to-follow checklists that may be of service to individuals getting started.

The book focuses on the real-world case-based crisis management in digital product development. This includes forecasting, responding, and agile engineering/management methods, patterns, and practices for sustainable development. This book introduces a set of case studies for sustainability in management as a blend, the components of which have been carefully selected from a few domains adjacent to digital production such as IT-intensive operation, human resource management, and knowledge engineering, to name a few. The key ingredients of this crisis management framework include information management, tradeoff optimization, agile product development, and knowledge transfer. The case studies this book features will help the stakeholders in understanding and identifying the key technology, business, and human factors that may likely result in a digital production crisis, i.e., critically affect the organization outcomes in terms of successful digitalization and sustainable development. These factors are particularly important for the large-scale applications, typically considered very complex in managerial and technological aspects, and, therefore, specifically addressed by the discipline of IT crisisology.

This new volume contains selected papers that were presented at the 2013 conference on performance measurement and management control focusing on behavioral implications and human actions associated with the use of performance measurement and management control systems.

'I highly recommend students, teachers and researchers to enjoy reading this set of excellent papers.' – Boris Graizbord, El Colegio de México, Mexico 'It is obvious that cities have long been the focus if analysis by the scholars and practitioners whose writings published in the Kresl-Sobrino Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Urban Economies. The depth and excellence of the numerous topics examined reflects effective networking between the scholars involved, their analyses of approaches, problems and potentials of cities on the numerous continents, and the continuing role of the Global Urban Competitiveness Project in encouraging the development of methodologies and data helpful in understanding the hard and soft determinants of the growth and decline of cities.' – Pierre-Paul Proulx, Université de Montréal, Canada 'This collection of essays provides a rich assortment of methods used to investigate the complex economic, social, environmental, demographic and political systems in cities throughout the world. It gives researchers, lecturers and students a useful taste of the different ways of studying these phenomena in diverse urban settings.' – Ivan Turok, University of Glasgow, UK In this timely Handbook, seventeen renowned contributors from Asia, the Americas and Europe provide chapters that deal with some of the most intriguing and important aspects of research methodologies on cities and urban economies. The Handbook comprises five parts: methodology, continental distinctions, positioning cities, planning for the future, and urban structures. The 'methodologies' section includes interviews, empirical and theoretical approaches whilst 'continental distinctions' offers contributions on China, North America, Europe, Latin America and South Africa. 'Positioning' treats cities in the international context and relates them to economic and administrative spaces whilst 'planning' includes general strategic economic planning, as well as the experience of individual cities. Finally, the 'structures' section refers to contextual and situational aspects of urban development. Providing a comprehensive study of urban development and competitiveness, this Handbook will strongly appeal to students wishing to gain a deeper understanding of research methods in urban economics, urban studies and planning.

The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Methods in Health Research is a comprehensive and authoritative source on qualitative research methods. The Handbook compiles accessible yet vigorous academic contributions by respected academics from the fast-growing field of qualitative methods in health research and consists of: - A series of case studies in the ways in which qualitative methods have contributed to the development of thinking in fields relevant to policy and practice in health care. - A section examining the main theoretical sources drawn on by qualitative researchers. - A section on specific techniques for the collection of data. - A section exploring issues relevant to the strategic place of qualitative research in health care environments. The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Methods in Health Research is an invaluable source of reference for all students, researchers and practitioners with a background in the health professions or health sciences.

The Narrative Approach to Informed Consent: Empowering Young Children’s Rights and Meaningful Participation is a practical guide for researchers who want to engage young children in rights-based, participatory research. This book presents the Narrative Approach, an original and innovative method to help children understand their participation in research. This approach moves away from traditional paper-based consent to tailor the informed consent process to the specific needs of young children. Through the Informing Story, which employs a combination of interaction, information and narrative, this method enables children to comprehend concepts through storytelling. Researchers are stepped through the development of an Informing Story so that they can deliver accurate information to young children about what their participation in research is likely to involve. To further inform practice, the book documents the implementation of the Narrative Approach in four case studies demonstrating the variety of settings in which the method can be applied. The Narrative Approach to Informed Consent addresses the rights of young children to be properly researched, expands opportunities for their active and engaged research participation, and creates a unique conceptual ethical space within which meaningful informed consent can occur. This book will be an invaluable tool for novice and experienced researchers and is applicable to a wide range of education and non-education contexts.